Jim Fraiser

A lawyer, actor, teacher,
editor, and now best-selling author, Jim Fraiser is a relative newcomer
to Mississippis literary scene, but his first novel, Shadow
Seed, published in July 1997, has received solid reviews and
sold out in hardcover after only two months on store shelves. The
novel, which will be released in paperback in spring 1998, is southern
fiction set in present-day Jackson,
Mississippi, and the Mississippi Delta at the turn of the century
and is described as a hair-raising psychological thriller,
and a provocative study of the moral ambiguity in the modern day
legal system and the society it seeks to protect.

John James Fraiser III was born in New
Orleans on October 27, 1954, the son of Chief Judge John Fraiser,
Jr, of Greenwood, Mississippi, and Adelyn Gerald Stokes. He grew
up in Greenwood, graduating from Greenwood High School in 1972.
He went on to receive a B.A. in English and history at the University
of Mississippi in Oxford in 1976 and a law degree from Ole Miss
three years later.

After serving as an assistant district
attorney in Hinds County from 1980 to 1982, he went into private
practice until 1995, when he became a special assistant attorney
general in the Civil Litigation Division, a position he still holds
today.

Even as he maintained his day
jobs, however, Fraiser worked at his other interests, which include
acting, writing, and teaching. From 1981 to 1991 he performed professionally
with Jacksons New Stage Theater. Several unpublished plays
which he wrote have been performed, including adaptations of Walker
Percys novel Love in the Ruins (1989) and Ernest
Hemingways The Sun Also Arises (1990), and the original
plays Cosmos by Copernicus (1991) and The Judas Principle
(1992). A member of the Screen Actors Guild since 1988, he had film
roles in Good Ole Boy (1988), Mississippi Burning
(1989), and Blind Vengeance (1992).

From 1988 to 1990, he was the philosophy
columnist for Down South Magazine, which published his short
story The Plutonian Chronicles
in 1989. Between 1990 and 1993, he served as a paralegal instructor
at the University of Mississippi and the Mississippi University
for Women. He has written freelance articles for Greenwood Commonwealth,
the Daily Mississippian, The Clarion Ledger, North
Mississippi Business Journal, Down South Magazine, National
Women Lawyers Journal, Mississippi Lawyer Magazine and
The American Bar Journal. Today, he is a contributing editor
for the Jackson Business Journal and a contributing writer
for the Northside Sun.

His first book was the humorous M is
for Mississippi: An Irreverent Guide to the Magnolia State (1991).
Shadow Seed is his first novel, and while its subject matter
and the profession of its author may bear some superficial resemblance
to another, more famous Mississippi lawyer-turned-author, the reviews
for the novel have been positive. A reviewer for the Delta Democrat
Times wrote that its layered story ... will both appeal
to readers appetites for commercial thrillers and leave them
thinking about the moral decay that plagues modern America.
Mississippi writer Charles Wilson says that Shadow Seed is reminiscent
of Cape Fear, but more chilling for its gritty realism. A
great read! Other reviewers have been
equally enthusiastic.

Fraiser lives in Jackson with his wife
and two daughters.

Related Links & Info

Fraiser was featured on the cover of the July 1997 cover of the Jackson
Business Journal